A bidet is a bathroom mounted plumbing fixture that uses clean water, ejected through a nozzle, to wash the genitalia, inner buttock, and anus, without the use of any paper tissue.
Due to the increasing ease of use, functionality, and cleanliness, bidets are being installed in more locations that have multiple users or users with disabilities. Bidets are becoming more common in hospitals because of their utility in maintaining hygiene and their ease of use for disabled or elderly patients. Bidets often make toileting possible for disabled and elderly users, affording them greater opportunity for independence.
Most modern bidets are similar in structure to a toilet. Bidets are usually permanently affixed to a water supplying means and include a water reservoir tank, a bowl with a rim, a seat, a seat lid, a first fluid nozzle for ejecting water discharged from the water reservoir tank to a user's genital and rectal areas, a second fluid nozzle for cleaning the water discharged from the water reservoir tank onto the user, and a third fluid nozzle to clean the first and/or second fluid nozzles. A bidet may also be a nozzle attached to an existing toilet, or a part of the toilet itself.
Modern bidets are often equipped with many electronically controlled functions that provide a more pleasant experience for the user. Some of these functions include, but are not limited to: a heating means for heating the water in the water reservoir tank to maintain the water at a certain temperature, a heating means for the bidet seat, a control means for adjusting the amount of water ejected from the fluid nozzles, and novel fluid nozzles that eject water in patterns that massage a user's genital and rectal regions.
Modern bidets are also often equipped with electronically controlled functions that allow the devices to be more easily controlled. Some of these functions include, but are not limited to: remote controls to activate the water fluid nozzles, adjustable water pressure, temperature compensation, and seating sensors for detecting whether a user is seated on the bidet seat.
Two relatively new features of modern bidets include fluid nozzle directional control and seating sensors for detecting whether a user is seated on the bidet seat. The seating sensors often use infrared or weight sensors to detect the presence of a user sitting on the bidet seat or approaching the bidet. Once a user is detected, these bidets activate from a power saving mode, which may include flushing the bowl before or after bidet use to ensure that each subsequent user has a fresh bidet. The fluid nozzle directional control may allow a user to adjust one of more or the fluid nozzles for a better cleaning experience.
Despite the increased options and functionality, modern bidets do not provide users of different sizes, shapes, and sex with the same cleaning experience. Bidets are usually preset to eject water at a given direction, regardless of the size, shape, and sex of the user. Some bidets allow a user to manually control the direction of the ejected water, but this process is cumbersome when each user must manually adjust the bidet before usage. Moreover, embarrassing accidents are possible where misadjusted bidet could spray water on user's cloths or surrounding furniture or walls.
Accordingly, a need exists for a bidet that automatically identifies the types of orifices, locations of orifices, sizes of orifices, shapes of orifices, gender of a user, and special anatomical conditions (e.g. hemorrhoids); calculates the proper bidet settings (e.g. fluid and air ejection direction, fluid and air pressure, and cleaning patterns, etc.) based on the user's anatomy and conditions.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,080 discloses a bidet that uses color differences, brightness differences, and edge detection of a user sitting on the bidet to construct a simplified diagram. This diagram (illustrated in FIG. 2 of U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,080) is supposed to crudely represent the user's lower body on the bidet. This diagram is not constructed using visual object recognition as there is no analysis of the user's lower body to determine the category or identification of the user's human lower orifices. Instead, the bidet assumes that the user's anus will always be in the approximate midline of the diagram and be detected by the thick edges and differences in color.
This bidet suffers from several problem and limitations. First, the color or contrast differences of a user may not be easily determined or detected (if the user has darker skin tones, or the bidet is located in lower light environments). Second, the user may not always be centered on the bowl and the resulting image (and edges) will not correspond to diagram (if the user is a small adult or child). Third, the user may have moles, birth marks, or hair that may clutter the diagram or be mistaken for orifices that make detection of the edges difficult and unreliable. Fourth, for obese users, parts of the orifices may not be readily detectable by simple edge detection or changes in brightness because they may be covered by fat tissue.
The subject invention overcomes the limitations of the bidet disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,080. The subject invention is a bidet that incorporates formal visual object recognition techniques. This bidet recognizes, identifies, and segments lower human body orifices for all user sizes, shapes, skin tones, gender, and skin conditions.